Hawthorn Roots
by Cicada with Pen
Summary: Draco Malfoy tries to root himself to normalcy after the war.
1. Stunted Roots

A/N: This story is dedicated to the incredible, unparalleled APlumTwilight, who generously reads every word I write and offers beyond valuable feedback. Thank you!

Also - I do not own Harry Potter, though it would be nice if I did.

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><p>Draco Malfoy stands on the pavement outside the Leaky Cauldron with a small black suitcase. People hurry around him, absorbed in their own business. The sky is gray and heavy with rain. The colors and sounds are muted, as if washed away by the raindrops now dancing on the pavement. Pulling up the collar of his coat, he hurries inside, and finds an empty chair by a window facing the street.<p>

He picks up his suitcase and places it on the ledge. The suitcase is his life, everything that he wants to take from his old life to put in the new. He wants to forget his old life, shed it like a snake sheds its skin, and emerge with a new skin, a new life, free of the sorrows and blunders and terrors of the nightmare he has lived until now, six years after the end of the war. He carries more baggage than most; the scar on his left arm, and the scars on his memory of being forced to torture, to kill.

By all rights a twenty-three-year-old man should be in his prime, whole and able. He should not have creases at the corners of his eyes, nor a ribbon of gray in his hair. Time has not been good to Draco Malfoy; it has aged him beyond his years.

A gust of wind flings the door open and Draco recognizes the figure in the doorway from his childhood. She is from an old pureblood family, the younger of two daughters, two years his junior, and it drives him crazy that he cannot remember her name. He flinches as she meets his gaze, embarrassed that she caught him staring.

"Can I sit here?" she asks, indicating the chair next to his. When he does not respond, she sits down anyway, pulling off her damp traveling cloak and placing it next to his suitcase. He glances at her reflection in the window. She is not beautiful, or even pretty; her features are plain, partly obscured by a sheet of strawberry blonde hair whose hue reminds him uncomfortably of the Weasleys. She sits in the chair beside him and does not talk, preferring to gaze thoughtfully at the rain.

The memories start coming back to him now, from a time when he thought life was a leisurely stroll in the manicured gardens of the Malfoy estate.

_The Malfoy manor is the center of elite society, always full of the influential, the rich, the famous, and the sophisticated. His companion and her elder sister are frequently seen at the manor with their rich, aristocratic parents, the stereotypical invitees. Both girls have the same ruddy curls and sea-blue eyes, but the similarity ends there: The elder is pretty and full of energy. The younger is neither; she is quiet, even boring compared to her lively sister. _

_His companion's sister is Draco's age. They are always seen together, whether they are playing or talking or eating, and their little eastern screech owls know the way between their two homes with their eyes shut. Draco loves the sunshine of his little friend._

_At school, they go their separate ways. Draco's new companion becomes Pansy Parkinson, while her tastes vary from month to month (the last he saw, she was flirting with Seamus Finnegan). That's the thing about sunshine - it's pretty while it lasts, but you can never count on good weather to arrive when you need it._

_The horror first strikes when he turns sixteen, and only worsens in the following years. He is a tree jerked from the ground in a storm, in desperate need of an anchor to secure him to peace and sanity. He needs to deepen, reach out, find his place, but how can you do that if you have no roots? You can't hold a tree down with light. Pansy roots are too flimsy, so he makes do with Myrtle, though they are not much better and a poor substitute for his own. _

_As the harsh winds whip around him, he looks in desperation to those around him. He sees an aster being similarly beaten, but holding its ground. He thinks to call out to it, but it is too late._

"It's never too late," she says, and Draco's face flames. "There's nothing wrong in asking for help." Draco glares at her, a sort of _it's-none-of-your-business-so-don't-lecture-me, _and she shrugs, picks up her cloak, and gets up to leave.

He is too proud to ask anyone her name, so he racks his memory over and over, sifting through more than two decades of recollection. The rain begins to let up, people come and go, and still he sits in the chair by the window and thinks. It is only when the proprietress comes and asks him if he wants anything to drink that he finally comes up with the name.

Astoria Greengrass.

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><p>He rents a room above the Leaky Cauldron and muses all night. <em>There's nothing wrong in asking for help<em>. He wants to snort in derision - Malfoys don't ask for help. But with Lucius serving a life sentence in Azkaban, and Narcissa in emotional and mental shambles, Malfoy pride has all but disintegrated. As much as he hates himself for it, he wants help; he wants roots, he wants connection. He wants to ensure that he doesn't make the same mistakes he made the first time around.

He stands at the window and watches the owl soar over the moonlit rooftops, a simple message tied to its leg. He knows that in by sending that one piece of parchment, he's cast his reputation and dignity to the dust, but considering that he's already little more than a pariah in the wizarding world anyway, he hasn't got much to lose by sending an SOS.

At long last, the morning comes, and with it, a new letter tied to the leg of the exhausted owl, written in a loopy scrawl that Draco suspects must have given headaches to the Hogwarts professors. It's honest to the point of being blunt; the letter begins _I've never been good at being tactful and diplomatic, so I'll be straightforward with you - if you want to re-establish yourself, you can't act like an arrogant Malfoy heir, _and continues in this vein. He retroactively feels more than a twinge of indignation, but he appreciates the lack of sugarcoating.

She signs it with the distinctly informal, _Love, Astoria. _He's tempted to laugh, but he can't bring himself to do it. _Love, Astoria _means that she really cares, a rarity in the world of power-hungry aristocrats that he's grown up in. Right now, while he's trying to anchor himself to normalcy, he needs nothing more than someone to care, to help him grow from a stunted tree to a flowering plant with hawthorn roots - and aster flowers.


	2. Digging Deeper

She's there when he goes down for breakfast, sitting at a far table reading _The Daily Prophet_. He turns away and pretends he didn't notice her, and wonders both at the effect her letter has on him, and why she's even here in the first place. He orders a muffin and a cup of coffee, and nearly chokes on both in his effort to turn his head away when she walks to the door. He's disgusted with himself - he's a _Malfoy_, for heaven's sake, why is he going to such pains to avoid talking to her? How Nott would laugh - the guy who filled the dreams of so many girls can't bring himself to say something to a girl. Come to think of it, he's never actually spoken a word to her since their encounter yesterday. It's not that he _likes _her - oh, no - it's just that...that…

And while Draco's wrestling with himself the proprietress trips over a loose flagstone in the floor right next to his chair, spilling the drinks she was carrying all over Draco, and while she's busy cleaning and apologizing, Draco decides that maybe he'd better leave.

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><p>The morning is sunny, almost forcefully so, as if to make up for yesterday's rain. He doesn't have any plans for today, so he meanders up and down the cobbled streets, watching the people do their shopping, and all of a sudden, while watching a woman herd a gaggle of children out of Flourish and Blotts, he hears bright laughter behind him. He whirls round and it's <em>her <em>again, laughing with Luna Lovegood at a display in Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. Desperately wishing he had an Invisibility Cloak, he ducks into the nearest shop before either of them can spot him.

The Magical Menagerie is a fascinating place, but the first cage Draco sees is full of custard-colored ferrets, which bring back memories he'd rather forget, so he steps out again, only to bump right into the pair - the girl - he was trying to avoid.

"Hello, Draco. You have a Wrackspurt by your ear," says Luna in her familiar dreamy voice, batting something invisible next to his head, and as he's trying to avoid getting hit he notices a wedding band on her finger and wonders who, exactly, would be crazy enough to marry Loony Lovegood.

"Do you have any plans for today?" asks Astoria, and, figuring that she would know if he lied, he confesses that he has none.

"Would you like to meet me back at the Leaky Cauldron this afternoon?" It's one of those fake questions, the kind that are commands disguised with a question mark, so of course he says yes (what else can he say?) and she smiles graciously and walks off with Luna, leaving Draco disgusted at his distinctly un-Malfoy behavior. Well, her letter did start off "_you can't act like an arrogant Malfoy heir." _He laughs bitterly at the thought that he can check _that _off his list.

Their meeting at the Leaky Cauldron sparks a flurry of gossip in the newspapers, none of it kind, but Draco just tosses the criticism off his back and the papers out the window. He doesn't care, not when he's going to see Astoria the next day. He realizes, quite suddenly, that he's looking forward to seeing her, and he wonders at the change she's made.

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><p>She refuses him the first time he asks.<p>

They're sitting in the garden at the Greengrass estate (she's persuaded him to visit, and anyway he's sick of the hawk-like attention of _Witch Weekly_). He doesn't know what to say, how to say it, so he proposes with just the ring that's been in his family for years. She looks from him to the ring and tells him quietly but firmly, "No."

"Why not?" He's angry now; he needs her, and she's simply tossing him aside with the ring.

"You think I'm going to throw away my life just like that - for you?"

He's desperate, reeling, terrified that she'll pull out of his life and just leave him, and there's a tear on her face as she pushes back the hand with the ring and sends him away.

He Apparates back to the Leaky Cauldron, feeling more sad than angry. He wants to forget the experience, forget _her_, pretend that she doesn't matter, that none of this matters, but he knows, deep down, that he's lying. She does matter; she is the world, she is _his _world. And he realizes then, standing by the window ledge, looking out onto the tiled roofs of Diagon Alley, that he loves her.

A week passes, then two, and on one glorious morning Draco knocks at the doors of the place where he was rejected. She answers the door, and for once in his life he kneels at her feet and offers her the ring once more. The last remnants of his shattered Malfoy pride won't let him say that he loves her, but she can read it in his face, in his eyes, and she takes the ring and gives her heart in return.

A/N: Sorry for the long wait! Please review and tell me what you think.


	3. Aster Flowers

Their wedding is very simple. Astoria and Draco compromise on a small ceremony in the garden where they were engaged (rather, where Draco was rejected), a far cry from the lavish wedding that Narcissa once planned for her son. They invite a few old school friends, mostly Astoria's (Draco never had any close friends at Hogwarts), although he's not altogether pleased with sending an invitation to the Potters and the Weasleys, and his constant refrain is "We should just elope in Paris." Nevertheless, the invitations are sent out, the ceremony is arranged, and the house elves outdo themselves in preparing the food for the reception.

The wedding goes fairly smoothly, with most of the invited guests turning up (Draco is secretly thankful that Pansy Parkinson declined the invitation he sent out of politeness). Draco and Astoria hold hands throughout the ceremony, and while it goes on and on, he remembers that rainy day in the Leaky Cauldron that seems so long ago. In minutes (or so it seems), it's all over, and Astoria Greengrass is now Astoria Malfoy.

"You still think we should have eloped in Paris?" she asks with a laugh in her voice, and all of a sudden she reaches up and kisses him on the mouth. Some of the guests wolf-whistle, and he smirks at her when she ends the kiss. She smacks him playfully, and Ron calls from the audience, "Finish snogging already so we can get something to eat!"

"Shut up, Weasley," he says, but without the maliciousness he infused in the name during his school days. He's startled by the change that Astoria instigated in him - normally he'd have hexed Ron Weasley, if he'd have invited him to the wedding in the first place. Someone involved with the technical aspects of the wedding does a little hocus-pocus, and the newly married Malfoys lead the way to the reception.

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><p>Luna is avidly describing her and Rolf's recent trip to Brazil to look for Blibbering Humdingers to a hugely pregnant Ginny while pushing the double carriage with her infant sons back and forth. Lysander, her spitting image, is asleep, but Lorcan (who has Rolf's dark hair and blue eyes) is wide awake, gumming the leg of his plush Crumple-Horned Snorkack.<p>

..

Seamus and Lavender Finnegan's little boy, Kieran, is a match for James Potter when it comes to making mischief - halfway through the reception, they've managed to partially demolish the garden topiary, track mud onto the dance floor, and cause general havoc (a combination of accidental magic and the "terrible twos.") Harry says that if they could do all this at two years of age, he doesn't want to know what they'll get into at Hogwarts. Ron suggests that the best thing to do is to put Full-Body Bind curses on both of them before they do any more damage.

..

In the kitchen of the estate the house elves are moving around in a rush, putting a plate here, rinsing a bowl there, stacking champagne flutes by the sink, and generally too busy to listen to Hermione's passionate lecture on their rights. One of them stops piling éclairs on a heavy gilt-edged platter long enough to say, "Miss, house elves must do work! Miss is making house elves waste time!"

"But what about salaries, and pensions, and minimum wage - " The house elf looks at her sternly, and she throws her box of S.P.E.W badges to the floor and storms out, muttering something about Stockholm syndrome. One of the less bright elves picks up a shiny red badge, and all the other elves jump on him, screaming, "Bad Twinky! Bad Twinky!"

..

Teddy Lupin is sitting on a bench on the other side of the garden, entertaining Victoire Weasley by turning his hair different colors. She proclaims her favorite look (loose shoulder-length platinum curls) to be "magnifique" and grumbles at her own red hair.

"My grandmuzzer is beautiful, my muzzer is beautiful, and I?" She gives a small, ironic laugh, and plucks despondently at a long strand.

"I think you're beautiful," he says shyly, and even Metamorphosis can't turn his face the brilliant scarlet that it becomes when Victoire kisses his cheek in gratitude.

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><p>The guests have left by the time the sun starts to sink below the horizon. Draco and Astoria sit on the balcony, enjoying the cool breeze. His hand is wrapped in hers, or hers in his; at any rate their fingers are so intertwined that you can't tell where one stops and another begins.<p>

"I love you, Draco," she says into the cool night air.

"Where's your sense of Malfoy pride, Astoria?" He shakes his head at her in mock condescension. "Malfoys don't _do _I-love-you scenes, don't you know?"

"Says the man who kissed me in front of all the guests," she retorts, admiring the way that the emerald in her wedding band catches the quickly fading light.

"If I remember, _you _kissed _me_," he says, smirking in a _ha-ha-gotcha _kind of way. He pulls his hand away from hers and gathers her up in his arms, where she lays her head on his shoulder and he smooths her fiery hair away from her face. Even in this vulnerable, intimate pose, she exudes strength and inner will, the two things that the rich Malfoy heir didn't have. She brought him back, rooted him to life, to peace, and, as a result, to love. Astoria is the flower that blossomed with and from his hawthorn roots.

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><p>AN: I know Draco is a little out of character here, but I loved the scene with the plush Crumple-Horned Snorkack and I couldn't resist. Did you like it? Is there something you could have improved on? Tell me in the reviews!


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